Morphological Productivity in the Lexicon

In this paper we outline a lexical organization for Turkish that makes use of lexical rules for inflections, derivations, and lexical category changes to control the proliferation of lexical entries. Lexical rules handle changes in grammatical roles, enforce type constraints, and control the mapping of subcategorization frames in valency-changing operations. A lexical inheritance hierarchy facilitates the enforcement of type constraints. Semantic compositions in inflections and derivations are constrained by the properties of the terms and predicates. The design has been tested as part of a HPSG grammar for Turkish. In terms of performance, run-time execution of the rules seems to be a far better alternative than pre-compilation. The latter causes exponential growth in the lexicon due to intensive use of inflections and derivations in Turkish.Comment: 10 pages LaTeX, {lingmacros,avm,psfig}.sty, 1 figure, 1 bibtex fil

Paracompositionality, MWEs and Argument Substitution

Multi-word expressions, verb-particle constructions, idiomatically combining phrases, and phrasal idioms have something in common: not all of their elements contribute to the argument structure of the predicate implicated by the expression. Radically lexicalized theories of grammar that avoid string-, term-, logical form-, and tree-writing, and categorial grammars that avoid wrap operation, make predictions about the categories involved in verb-particles and phrasal idioms. They may require singleton types, which can only substitute for one value, not just for one kind of value. These types are asymmetric: they can be arguments only. They also narrowly constrain the kind of semantic value that can correspond to such syntactic categories. Idiomatically combining phrases do not subcategorize for singleton types, and they exploit another locally computable and compositional property of a correspondence, that every syntactic expression can project its head word. Such MWEs can be seen as empirically realized categorial possibilities, rather than lacuna in a theory of lexicalizable syntactic categories.Comment: accepted version (pre-final) for 23rd Formal Grammar Conference, August 2018, Sofi

Deriving the Predicate-Argument Structure for a Free Word Order Language

In relatively free word order languages, grammatical functions are intricately related to case marking. Assuming an ordered representation of the predicate-argument structure, this work proposes a Combinatory Categorial Grammar formulation of relating surface case cues to categories and types for correctly placing the arguments in the predicateargument structure. This is achieved by treating case markers as type shifters. Unlike other CG formulations, type shifting does not proliferate or cause spurious ambiguity. Categories of all argument-encoding grammatical functions follow from the same principle of category assignment. Normal order evaluation of the combinatory form reveals the predicate-argument structure. The appli- cation of the method to Turkish is shown

Combinatory Logic and Natural Language Parsing

We describe the connections between the primitives of Combinatory Logic and operations in natural language syntax. We also show how word order variation in Turkish syntax can be explained by a few primitives of Combinatory Logic. A computational framework for Turkish syntax for parsing surface structures into combinator expressions is outlined. Evaluation of combinator expressions (semantic forms) has been shown to be similar to interpreting functional programming languages. This research is supported in part by grants from T UB ITAK (project no. EEEAG90) and NATO TU-LANGUAGE Project. tel: (312)210-5580 fax: (312)210-1259 1 Introduction Formal approaches to natural language syntax and semantics have their roots in revolutionary developments in the early decades of the Twentieth Century. Frege and Husserl's view of language as a system of categories, Russell's theory of types, Church's -calculus, Carnap's formal logic, Tarski's work on model theory, and Curry's combinatory logic are ..

Gapping and word order in Turkish

Although word order is believed to be pragmatically controlled in Turkish, it nevertheless emerges from syntax. Identifying its origins in the lexicon is crucial, at least for the lexicalist theories of grammar, which would go one step further than phrase structur

Combinatory Linguistics

The book examines to what extent the mediating relation between constituents and their semantics can arise from combinatory knowledge of words. It traces the roots of Combinatory Categorial Grammar, and uses the theory to promote a Humean question in linguistics and cognitive science: Why do we see limited constituency and dependency in natural languages, despite their diversity and potential infinity? A potential answer is that constituents and dependencies might have arisen from a single resource: adjacency. The combinatory formulation of adjacency constrains possible grammars